18 Aug 2016

I am not my looks



Big shout out to the 800 new people who liked the page this week.πŸ’›  it's so great to have you around and hear from you how much you're getting out of my sharing.  I used to be a very paranoid and fearful person and when I was first 'called' to create this page in October last year, I was stunned.  I could not see why anyone would want to read a page about my journey of life, love and healing, let alone follow it.  I have come far enough in this life to trust that when I am 'called' it works best for me if I follow that call.  I've had so many amazing, rich, fulfilling and miraculous things happen when I've answered 'the call' that there was no question of me NOT writing this blog and keeping it going.  Every day my ego still says "no, stop.  No one reads it anyway".  and every day I tell my Soul: "you write it".  This project is bigger than I've ever yet known how to be and I'm not keen to make it small like I've tried to do to myself for so much of my life.  My faith in something bigger than me is my driving force.  Faith has opened me up to expose the jewels inside and out and my faith is now unwavering.  The part of myself I am making peace with now is about having that same faith in myself.  Having faith is worth nothing to me without recognising myself as one with it.

That's where my photos come in.  You may notice that the theme of the photos I'm using changed recently.  I have been using pictures of myself that have been altered in different styles.  This is part of the process of raising my awareness and learning to love myself past separateness. A couple of years ago I did some media training as part of the role I was in.  I was managing a service and would need tools and practice to approach and undertake media opportunities with confidence.  It was a great training session that I enjoyed immensely and I felt very confident - until I watched the tape.  I was so distressed at seeing myself on screen that I almost quit my job.  I knew then that I had some work to do on making peace with my own image.

I had been taking part in group photos for years with joy.  I hadn't allowed myself to realise though, how controlling I was of images of myself: My husband would take pictures of me smiling and I would ask him to delete and retake them until I thought they were 'perfect'; I never allowed full body shots because I could not stand to look at how huge my body seemed to me; I had begun to take selfies but was fanatical about them looking 'just right'.  It was tragic really and I had been working so hard on so much that I'd missed it.  It was now time to work on that too.  The part of that media training I liked best was that I felt good with how I looked off-screen.  When the teacher said I should dress differently for on-screen events, I didn't take that to mean anything about me like I once would have.  It was just a tip for the camera.

I began asking my husband to take more photos of me: working in the garden was big because I once would never have gone for that at all.  The biggest change came when we got married last year.  We were looking over some photos together on our wedding night and both struggling with all of these shots that we thought looked silly.  Wondering if we had any wedding shots that looked worthy of a magazine, we suddenly realised the photos were perfect because they captured exactly who we are.  We were all dressed up in gorgeous clothes, with huge smiles and, we were pulling faces!  We were rolling our eyes, throwing out heads back, crying, chuckling, concentrating and more.  We saw our true selves in those photos and we both embraced that right there.  That's when miracles started to happen.  The way we looked at our photos and ourselves changed right then in that room and our perception of the photos changed too.  We ended up printing off all 1500 photos in colour and in black and white and now have them all over the walls of our bedroom like a shrine.  One of the pictures of me is my favourite photo ever.  I can see my soul shining through and all of life's troubles do not exist in that moment.  Since then all the old photos I have of myself look different to me and I look different in them - it's amazing rally to see the difference that my perception changing has made to what my eyes see.

After our wedding I set out to conquer my dislike of my own image and started taking a selfie a day.  The challenge I set myself was to send it straight to my husband without editing.  The biggest challenge was to send the first take, and not take 20 photos before I found one I was happy with.  I took one photo every morning and sent it straight to my husband.  Sometimes with my hair sticking up, with cold sores, with puffy crying eyes, with sleepy eyes, with pimples and grime, with my tongue poked out.  For around 40 days I did this and then I made peace.  I broke through my poor ego's delusion and stopped making my image so important that I hid it whenever I could.  Right now, I'm working on it more.  I still have a few fears around image so I'm creating the photos I'm using on this blog to have fun with my image and not take myself so seriously.  Seeing myself as a terminator, a robot, an angel, with trees coming out of my head or with flames all around me is fun and liberating.  I am not my face or my body or my looks.  I am soul and there is nothing to not love about me.  I can now laugh, have fun, forgive myself and others and, look at my own image with love and acceptance.  That has taken me 47 years and that's okay.  I'm doing it and I appreciate you helping me to learn how.

May you find peace with who you are too, in your own time and way.  And may I be there to watch you grow also.  

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